A gentle return to the mundane performance of my life.

Oh God, another trip to the grocery store. Whenever I dry up for blog posts, I head on over to the local supermarket and stock up on fresh meat.

I'm not really sure why I was there. It's so cool to have a supermarket a thousand feet from my house, so sometimes I go just because of because. I love the Cheerios, so I'll grab a box. There's like a hundred Cheerios products - wheat, fruit, stonewashed - they call them the "Cheerios Family", as though they had parents or something. So, which kid am I bringing home to pour Soy milk on and eat? It was MultiGrain. You probably could have guessed that one. You are what you eat.

And that meant I needed pork chops. But not the regular pork chops that I'd have to [egad] cook. These are already cooked (sorta like pre-chewed, but not as sickening) and packaged in an air-tight tomb that would be safe to eat until Al Gore becomes president. Between those and the Purdue pre-shaped breaded and flavored (real) chicken, it's a regular Diner around here.

I also like the flavored water. And I'd like to get some, but I can't, because the Swiss Family Robinson is debating which of the multitude of flavors they want. Just take one, OK? You look like you need more Taurine. Take the red one. You should see these people trying to buy Cheerios!

Anyway, inevitably it's off to my favorite place, the check-out line. Is anyone besides me completely grossed out by men who carry those wallets with the little change purse inside? Put your change in your pants, like a man. There's the guy in front of me, delicately reaching for eight cents among his week's worth of collected change. In a one-inch square container. Keep fishing, Nancy.

As faithful readers know, I bring my own bags. Usually, they look at me cross eyed, because they're the same bags that the store sells, so they're always confused as to whether I'm buying them or bringing them. Or, maybe they're just cross eyed?

The odd thing is that I'm supposed to be getting 2 cents for each bag I use, but I didn't find out about it until Thursday. The two bags I brought earned me 4 cents off my bill. If you can use them 50 times, they'll pay for themselves. After that, it's pure profit, baby.

I figured that if you really wanted to piss them off, you'd come to the store with 50 of them, and put one item in each bag. Would they have to give you a dollar off? You could say you were OCD or something and had to have each item in its own 'home'. I feel a little OCD just for thinking it up.

Then, I figured it probably wouldn't be worth a dollar to have to lug all those bags in and put one thing in each one. More trouble than it's worth, and all. You could probably get one of those hidden camera TV shows to do it, though. The ones that like to piss off strangers and then laugh about it.

NOTE TO PRODUCERS: If I see it, I'm callin' ya for my share of the 2 cents.